Medical practices have recently been introducing various computer systems that deal with medical documents such as medical reports, hereinafter called simply as the reports, in the form of electronic data to facilitate making and managing the medical documents. Among those computer systems for medical use, a report maker assistant system that facilitates making the report is widely used in practice.
The report maker assistant system is constituted of a report producing terminal, and a database server storing data of the reports produced on the report producing terminal. In addition to the report data, the database server stores data of medical images, which are taken by medical inspection equipments or modalities such as CR (Computed Radiography), CT (Computed Tomography), and MRI (Magnetic Resonation Imaging).
The report producing terminal is operated, for instance, by a doctor who is specialized in diagnosis based on the medical images, hereinafter referred to as an interpreting doctor. The report producing terminal accepts entry of a finding, that is, an observation record about the condition of a lesion perceived by the interpreting doctor in the medical image. The report producing terminal has an editorial function of compiling data of the entered findings into a report. The interpreting doctor makes the report while observing the medical images on a display device of the report producing terminal or a specific display device.
The database server stores the data of the reports and the medical images so as the data to be readable through a network. A doctor who requests a radiological image interpretation, hereinafter referred to as the requesting doctor, makes an access to the database server through a terminal installed in a diagnosis-and-treatment department, to retrieve and view the report data and the medical image data.
The medical image is accompanied with various accessory information like patient ID, patient's name, sex and birth date of patient, inspection ID, date of inspection or image-capturing, conditions of the image-capturing, and the kind of inspection. As indexes for making the report, the accessory information and the medical image are displayed on the same display screen.
JPA 2007-185215 discloses a medical image display apparatus that specifies several display modes for the medical image and its accessory information. For example, the largest site is identified among those sites of a test body which are contained in tomograms, and an area of the largest site is determined in each image, so that the accessory information may not overlap the determined image area on the display screen. In a first embodiment of this prior art, that may be called “text-priority image-shift mode”, or a second embodiment called “image-priority text display mode”, either the image or the accessory information is shifted so as to avoid the overlap of the accessory information with the determined image area on the screen.
In a third embodiment of the prior art, called “region of interest preset mode”, the interpreting doctor designates a region of interest (ROI) in the medical image on the screen, so that the displayed accessory information may not overlap with the designated region of interest. The prior art also discloses another embodiment called “image reduction mode”, wherein the size of the medical image is reduced on the screen depending upon the volume of the accessory information to be displayed together, so as to avoid the overlap of the accessory information with the medical image.
Being essential data for the diagnosis, the medical image is expected to be displayed as fine and clear as possible. On the other hand, the accessory information includes requisite data items necessary for radiological interpretation and report-making and non-requisite data items. The value of each data item of the accessory information may vary with the requesting doctor, the interpreting doctor or the patient under the inspection. For these reasons, it is preferable to attach higher priority to displaying valuable data items and give lesser priority to unimportant data items.
According to the first and second embodiments of the above mentioned prior art, one of the display sections for the medical image and the accessory information is shifted while the other is fixed. Because the respective display sections cannot move beyond the display screen, there is a certain limit to the shift amount of the display section. It means that the respective display sections may sometimes overlap. In the overlapped part, visibility of the medical image or the accessory information gets worse. This may lead to medical errors such as a misdiagnosis and the oversight of a lesion. Beside that, the shifted display section of the medical image or the accessory information from its normal position makes it difficult to compare the medical image with past medical images.
The third embodiment of the prior art requires the interpreting doctor to designate the region of interest, which is inconvenient and troublesome. The fourth embodiment is expected to be applied to those medical images which are pasted on such a report that does not require detailed image-interpretation, wherein image deterioration through the size reduction is no problem. Concerning the medical image to be subjected to the radiological interpretation, however, the size reduction causes the problem that the image deterioration decreases the accuracy of the diagnosis.